A necessary Union can become an intrusive Union

The European Union includes subsidiarity in its fundamental law. Not in a decorative declaration, but in Article 5 of the Treaty.

In areas that do not fall within the Union’s exclusive competence, Brussels should act only when the member states cannot sufficiently achieve the objective and its scale or effects allow it to be achieved better at European level. In addition, the action must not exceed what is necessary.

The theory seems impeccable: conferred competence, demonstrated necessity, and proportionality.

The problem is institutional. Whoever proposes acting also participates in justifying why it should do so. Every regulation creates expertise, budgets, procedures, and expectations that favor the next one. And national governments can use Europe to approve decisions they would rather not defend before their own citizens.

The EU is not an external force invading innocent states. European centralization is usually built with the collaboration of the same governments that later blame ‘Brussels.’

That is why the debate should not be Europe: yes or no. It should be more demanding:

  • Which problems need Europe?
  • Which decisions should remain with the member states?
  • Which areas should return to regions and municipalities?
  • And, more urgently, which areas should return to citizens?

Where European scale makes sense

Europe adds value when a problem crosses borders or when fragmentation destroys the outcome.

  • The single market needs rules that prevent one state from closing its economy while demanding access to the others. The free movement of people, goods, services, and capital would lose force if every border restored arbitrary barriers.
  • Competition policy also needs broad scale. A corporate giant can exceed the capacity of a small state and negotiate with several governments separately. A European authority has greater capacity to contain anticompetitive agreements, abuses of dominant position, or national aid that distorts the common market.
  • External trade gains bargaining power when twenty-seven countries act together. Cross-border pollution, energy networks, the safety of products circulating across the continent, and certain financial risks also justify coordination.

In these fields, the Union does not replace sufficient national capacity. It solves a problem that arises precisely from interdependence.

To deny this would be to confuse sovereignty with powerlessness.

The leap from coordination to uniformity

The difficulty begins when a necessary competence pulls in others that are not necessary.

A common market needs compatible standards. It does not need to turn every social preference into an identical rule. Environmental protection may require shared objectives. It does not always require the same instrument in Finland, Andalusia, and Malta. Product safety needs a common threshold. It does not require Brussels to design every detail of use.

  • Coordination means establishing the conditions under which different systems can coexist.
  • Uniformity means reducing those differences because diversity inconveniences the regulator.

The first operation can expand freedom. The second can impoverish it.

European centralization often advances through an attractive line of reasoning:

  • If a rule differs between states, it creates costs.
  • If it creates costs, it hinders the market.
  • If it hinders the market, the EU must harmonize it.

Taken to its extreme, this argument has no limit. Every cultural, fiscal, labor, or social difference produces some transaction cost.

But diversity also creates institutional competition. It allows policies to be compared, lessons to be learned from those that achieve better results, and failed models to be abandoned without imposing the error on the entire continent.

The question is not whether difference has a cost. It is whether suppressing it creates more value than it destroys.

Plastics: an externality that knows no customs borders

The 2019 European directive on single-use plastics restricted the marketing of products such as cutlery, plates, straws, and stirrers when alternatives existed. Its purpose was to reduce waste and marine pollution.

There is a defensible European case. Plastic travels through rivers and seas, products circulate through the single market, and a collection of incompatible rules can hinder industrial substitution.

However, accepting the scale does not settle the design. A directive can set objectives and allow different national solutions; it can also specify products, deadlines, and requirements in ways that limit experimentation. It should consider medical uses, the availability of alternatives, costs for low-income households, and actual results.

  • The useful debate does not pit those who love the sea against those who love a drinking straw.
  • It asks whether the European measure was necessary, whether the instrument was the least intrusive, and whether it will be evaluated with data.

Subsidiarity does not deny the externality. It requires proportionality to be demonstrated.

Light bulbs: efficiency, innovation, and choice

European ecodesign regulation progressively removed less efficient lighting technologies from the market and later updated the requirements for light sources.

The rationale combines energy savings, emissions, and the common market. Manufacturers and distributors operate at continental scale; fragmented standards would generate costs.

The technical result has accompanied a real transformation toward much more efficient lighting. That does not make questions of freedom and design irrelevant.

  • Was it necessary to ban products, or would energy prices, labeling, and information have been enough?
  • Did the rule accelerate an innovation that was already advancing, or did it prematurely lock in a technology?
  • Were compatibility, quality of light, waste, and purchasing power considered?

These questions do not invalidate the policy. They prevent the apparent success of one rule from becoming a license to regulate every household object.

An intervention can work and still need limits. Effectiveness does not remove freedom from the balance.

Directive or regulation: form also distributes power

The Union does not always intervene with the same intensity.

  • A regulation applies directly and reduces national discretion.
  • A directive sets a result that each state must transpose into its legal order, in principle retaining some freedom over the means.
  • There are also recommendations, voluntary coordination, and mutual recognition.

Choosing the instrument is itself a subsidiarity decision.

  • If recognizing a product authorized by another state is sufficient, harmonizing every detail may be unnecessary.
  • If a common objective permits different paths, a directive may respect diversity better than an exhaustive regulation.

Proportionality is not only about how much Europe regulates. It also asks how it does so.

  • A justified European competence can be exercised through a disproportionate instrument.
  • The correct scale does not, by itself, guarantee the correct form.

The control mechanism

The Treaty of Lisbon created a system for national parliaments to monitor subsidiarity. After receiving a legislative proposal, they have eight weeks to submit a reasoned opinion. If certain thresholds are reached, the proposal must be reviewed.

On paper, the states control European growth. In practice, the mechanism is weak.

  • Eight weeks is little time to translate a proposal, study its effects, consult regional parliaments, and coordinate national chambers.
  • Legislatures often lack sufficient staff to follow the volume of initiatives.
  • Moreover, scrutiny is concentrated in the initial phase, before many amendments introduced during negotiations.

The Commission’s report for 2024 recorded 252 opinions from national parliaments. Only 14 were reasoned opinions specifically concerning subsidiarity.

The figure allows two interpretations.

  • It may indicate that most proposals respect the principle.
  • It may also reveal that the mechanism is too narrow, technical, or costly to activate.

The European Parliament’s fact sheet on subsidiarity notes that, according to a 2021 parliamentary study, the Court of Justice had never annulled a measure for violating this principle. In 2024, the first action promoted by a national parliament specifically under Protocol No. 2 was filed.

A principle that almost never stops a rule risks becoming ceremonial.

Distance conceals responsibility

The European architecture enables a convenient political game.

  • A government participates in the Council and supports a decision.
  • It then returns home and says that ‘Europe requires it.’
  • A national parliament avoids the cost of explaining the measure.
  • The Commission points out that the states approved it.
  • The citizen does not know whom to hold accountable.
  • When everyone intervenes, no one seems responsible.

Subsidiarity demands the opposite: a visible chain between decision, cost, and consequence. Every European proposal should explain:

  • Which state cannot act on its own?
  • What evidence demonstrates the advantage of scale?
  • Which less intrusive alternatives were rejected?
  • Which part of the result will be measured?

A standard sentence in an impact assessment is not enough. The justification must be open to refutation.

In addition, regions with legislative powers should participate when a proposal affects their competences. If scrutiny ends at the national parliament, the state’s internal diversity disappears precisely when proximity is being assessed.

And we have not yet discussed subsidiarity at the personal, family, neighborhood, or associational level. Political representation—by itself—does not return to the person the decisions that he or she can assume directly.

A subsidiarity reform of Europe

The EU would be stronger if it clearly declined to intervene where it adds no scale.

  • First, subsidiarity assessments should contain concrete metrics, alternatives, and the costs of inaction. ‘The objective is better achieved at European level’ is not a demonstration.
  • Second, the period available to national parliaments should be extended. European institutions have already discussed moving from eight to twelve weeks. Rushed scrutiny favors the proposer.
  • Third, substantial amendments introduced by Parliament or the Council should receive a new assessment. It makes no sense to review the subsidiarity of a proposal and then approve a very different text without repeating the test.
  • Fourth, certain rules should include review and sunset clauses. If the reason was a technology, a crisis, or a specific deficiency, the competence should be reconsidered when circumstances change.
  • Fifth, Europe should use more outcome standards and fewer instructions about method. Setting a common objective may be necessary; imposing a single way of achieving it usually is not.

Finally, the Union needs to recognize the political value of diversity. A continent is not a company that should eliminate all its internal variations.

Europe where it adds freedom

Criticism of centralization does not require rejecting Europe.

The EU has enlarged individual freedom by:

  • Removing national barriers.
  • Expanding opportunities for mobility.
  • Creating a market of enormous scale.
  • Allowing medium-sized countries to negotiate together.

These functions can protect the individual from the power of his or her own state and from giant private interests.

The paradox is clear: Europe can decentralize power when it limits the national state. It can also centralize power when it replaces decisions that could have remained closer to citizens.

No label resolves the tension.

  • ‘European’ does not necessarily mean free.
  • Nor do ‘national’ or ‘local.’

The test remains the same: capacity, scale, externality, minimal intrusion, accountability, and reversibility.

A Union that acts in everything ends up debating details while losing strength on what is essential. A Union that concentrates its authority on what is genuinely common can be more legitimate, more understandable, and more effective.

Europe does not need to choose between integration and freedom. It needs to remember that integration deserves that name only when it unites without absorbing.

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